


Other Shadows

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Dark, Dark Irmo, Dark Mandos, Dark Manwe, Dark Nessa, Dark Nienna, Dark Oromë, Dark Ulmo, Dark Vairë, Dark Varda, Dark Yavanna, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Nightmares, Self-Harm, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Travel, Undead, What if a different Vala went evil?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-09-30 09:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Melkor was the one to fall, but he didn't have to be.What if it had been another Vala that fell to the dark?





	1. Irmo

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [Other Shadows-之二](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25425097) by [CoffeeCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeCloud/pseuds/CoffeeCloud)

> I don't own the Silmarillion.
> 
> I am going to attempt to write one of these for each of the major Vala, but we'll see how that goes. I'm using these as breaks from working on prompts, so updates may be somewhat sporadic.

Fingon hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, so he was probably one of the sanest people in the camp at the moment. Those who’d been awake for too many hours longer were either all but nodding off or jittery with stimulants; those who’d been asleep too much sooner were still trembling from their dreams.

Trembling. Screaming. Sobbing. Trying to wrench free from their restraints so that they could drive a tent peg into their brains.

They all had their little ways of coping.

The healers promised that soon they would find a way to induce dreamless sleep. Fingon nodded, and smiled, and told the good news to his people.

Inwardly, he had his doubts.

But now was not the time for doubts. Not here of all places. 

Maedhros’s tent had a wide ring of space around it. Even the two guards stood a wary distance from the tightly tied flaps. Both of them had bloodshot eyes and shaking hands.

They didn’t need steadiness for this job. There was no real threat. It just - It made everyone feel things were safer.

For everyone involved.

Fingon nodded at them. Smiled.

Thirty-six hours ago, he had dreamed that his smile stretched on and on until the skin split and his whole face slid off like the mask it was. It had hurt, slipping off, it had hurt even when he’d held it in his hands -

But that wasn’t real. This was real.

As soon as he forgot that, he’d be in the tent right beside Maedhros.

He slipped inside the tent. There was a light burning because there always had to be a light burning to keep Maedhros from screaming out, and it was a gem glowing out, not an open flame, because there were far too many flammable things in a tent to possibly trust to Maedhros’s restraints.

He was still restrained for now, though. Still tied to a chair since he flinched so violently from every bed they’d offered.

Still trembling in every muscle because he refused to sleep.

Or, as he sometimes put it, to wake up.

He didn’t say anything today. He had yesterday, but Maglor had sung to him yesterday, and that helped, sometimes. Maglor hadn’t sung today, because today was Maglor’s shift to go under the poppy.

It was the only way any of them could bear to stay asleep long enough to truly rest, if it could be called rest.

Maedhros always just spat it back up.

“You really are safe now,” Fingon said helplessly. Hopelessly. It had never worked before. Why should it work now? “This isn’t another nightmare. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Maedhros looked at him and - laughed. Actually laughed. Laughed until tears came out of his bloodshot, sunken eyes, and his chipped, brittle nails scrabbled for purchase on the chair’s left arm, leaving flecks of blood behind.

The right arm just shook under its painfully tight straps.

The stump of the hand he’d gnawed off to escape whatever nightmare he had visioned sprouting from it had no nails left to scrape.

“Alright, it is a nightmare,” Fingon conceded. “But it’s still reality.” He smiled weakly, and the smile stretched and stretched and stretched -

It did not break. His skin did not break.

He told himself that firmly as he forced the smile down.

This was real. This was real. This was real.

It had to be.


	2. Mandos

The walls of Hithlum were ridiculously tall because they had to be.

It took the dead longer to stack themselves into high enough towers to attack that way.

Caranthir could see them even now at the bottom, reforming after their last attack failed. Pale grey bodies in bone white armor that were only just visible against the white of the snow and that stacked themselves up with no care for pain and no mind left to think of tools.

As far as they had been able to tell, most of them had only enough mind left to think of what would happen to them if they failed.

There had been a few exceptions.

“He should have known better,” Fingon said numbly beside him. “Turgon knew Ada was gone, he _knew_ \- “ He bit back whatever words were next and gripped the top of the wall to balance himself instead. “And now he’ll be the next face over the wall.”

“Not the next face,” Caranthir offered. It was all the limited comfort he had to offer. “He’s strong. He won’t break easily.”

Fingon considered this for a moment before saying what they both already knew. “That doesn’t actually help.” He looked down at the seething mass of undead below. “What do you think he does to them that it makes them fear returning to him so much?”

Caranthir actively tried to avoid thinking about that. It helped nothing, and they couldn’t afford guilt when they sent the shrieking horde back to its master.

The living were already outnumbered by the dead. They had to take precedence if they were to stand any chance at all.

“I’d be more interested to know why only one in ten Men end up in that horde outside our walls,” he said instead. They had been Fingolfin’s walls once, but Fingolfin was dead, and thanks to the retreat, Caranthir had as many men trapped here as Fingon did. He had as much claim to these walls as anyone.

“Maybe they move on too quickly for him to catch them,” Fingon suggested, latching onto the new topic quickly. “We’ve always thought they moved on somewhere. Not like us.”

“Not like us,” Caranthir agreed grimly. Not for them was a hoped for paradise. For them there was nothing but the promise that they were bound to the circles of the world for however long it lasted.

Living, dead, or a horrible perversion of both.

His hopes were slowly fading that somewhere out there his brothers were still in the first category.

Fingon was curiously silent beside him, and Caranthir realized, looking at him, that he was building up to something.

“What?” he asked. He had spent the midnight hours removing his uncle’s head so that Fingon would have time to light the body on fire; there seemed little point in delicacy now.

“Seeing my father return after so long made me realize that we still haven’t seen _your_ father yet,” Fingon said quietly. 

“He was strong,” Caranthir said firmly. Perhaps there was still need for delicacy after all, little though he usually thought of it, if this was going where he thought it was. “Maybe - “

“It’s been two hundred years,” Fingon interrupted. “No one’s that strong, and you know it.”

It had taken Fingolfin twelve years to fall and consent to be pushed into a stretched thin body covered in armor that looked too much like bone. Fingolfin had lasted far longer than most.

Caranthir’s father was strong.

But no one was that strong. Not against a Vala. Not in the end.

“Maybe he’s off attacking Maedhros’s people,” he said.

“Maybe,” Fingon said with almost faded hope, and he politely did not mention what they both knew but tried not to talk about: That Maedhros had last sent a bird with a message a little over a year ago, and there was a limit to how often messages could simply go astray.

But that wasn’t what Fingon was driving at now.

“That’s not what the men think,” Fingon said. “They think the Halls of Death never held him. That maybe he went straight to the Void.”

The Oath, the accursed Oath, stirred to life within him, and even on Hithlum’s cold walls it felt like a dragon’s wealth of fire.

“I want to swear an Oath,” Fingon said bluntly. He held up a hand to forestall Caranthir’s startled protest. “Not to claim the Silmarils, I’m not fool enough to try to cross you in that, but something else. Anything else that seems unattainable.”

“Do you really think the Void will be better than Death’s halls?” Caranthir demanded when he got his voice back. “It’s like _fire,_ Fingon! Even now it’s burning me up from the inside out, and it won’t be too much longer till there’s nothing left but its call or the darkness beyond. It’s not _better.”_

“It might be,” Fingon said wearily, looking down at the shattered remnants of those that were once their people below. “And even if it’s not, at least the Void won’t spit me back out and send me out against whoever’s still breathing.”

Caranthir closed his eyes and tried to think. It made sense. Horrible, burning sense. It would be the highest bargain he had ever witnessed being driven, but it made sense.

“What will you swear?” he finally asked, defeat in his voice.

“To kill Death,” Fingon answered promptly. “That way either I fail and go to the Void, or succeed and don’t have a need to.”

A faint smile, the first for a while, stole across Caranthir’s lips. “To killing death,” he said, miming a mocking toast.

“To killing Death,” Fingon repeated.

The warning bell cut off anything further he might have said.

But as they raced to answer it, Caranthir saw Fingon mouthing further words, and he felt a shiver of power when his cousin finished.


	3. Yavanna

When Dior was a child, the forest had been green and lush and safe.

But then his grandfather had died and Grandmother had left them, and there had been no choice but to set the whole thing ablaze. He still remembered the choking smoke as they’d fled and the hideous heat. They had run as close to the fire as they dared because it was safer than the alternative.

In the charred skeletons of dead trees, there were twisted fragments of bone still visible that had once belonged to those who had not stayed close enough.

The area remained safely scorched, though, and what little had grown back flinched away from the holy light on his brow.

The caves of Doriath loomed ahead, the soilless stone promising even greater safety. 

They had fled the forest, but the forest was gone. Maybe now it would be safe to return. They said there were a thousand caves in Doriath; they could plant their gardens at the far end, pin them in with steel, and guard them with axes and fire until they were ready to sing the plants to sleep long enough to snatch their fruits.

It would be safe in there, even with Melian gone, or at least safer than being out here, always waiting for a vine to strangle you softly while you were sleeping or for roots to shoot up and drag your bleeding body into the earth so that their tress could grow lush and strong.

It would be safe, he thought, and his hand brushed the moss that had grown up on the side of the cave.

He snatched his hand back immediately. His hand still stung, small drops of blood clinging to the palm. The moss grew fat upon its own share, bulging outward, but even it shrank back from the light.

Nowhere was safe, he reminded himself, and he proceeded more slowly. Safer than most places did not have to mean particularly safe at all.

(But the stone holds. It holds steady and firm, and they lose only a few to the harvest each year until the Feanorains come.)

(When the Feanorians come, the guards’ blood flows freely into the garden, and it sends out a call to the Ents.)

(Elured and Elurin do not expect to see a forest when they flee from the caves. There was not one there last night. It is the first time they have seen full grown trees.)

(It is also the last.)


	4. Ulmo

There had always been a few boats that went out on the water and never returned. The sea was a dangerous place, and some of monsters from the Valar’s great war still lurked in the deep.

That number dropped after Ulmo’s repentance and long debated release.

At least, it dropped at first.

_Three boats were lost in the storm last night,_ Arafinwe wrote from Alqualonde, and he went on to talk of the funerals and then of other things entirely.

_Earwen’s cousin has still not returned from his trip down the coast,_ he wrote a month later. _Probably he has just gotten caught up in wanderlust again, but I can’t help worrying._

Two months after that: _He still has not so much as sent word, and I am losing hope, though I do not tell Earwen yet._ And: _We lost five more boats to the storm. I don’t know why they were even out there in the first place. We knew the storm was coming. But it was like the sea was calling to them, and they wouldn’t - _

The one crumpled in Fingolfin’s hand read, _I wish you would come, Nolo. There are shadows even in the shallows now. I look out to the water, and I feel very strange._

Alqualonde stood majestic and pearly white in the soft light of the Mingling.

It also stood totally silent and totally still. No gulls. No crabs.

No people.

Just Nolofinwe, a few feet from the edge of the lapping water that stretched darkly into the horizon, and Feanaro, who had insisted on coming along to prove some wild theory of his, and who was now standing in the shallows and frowning.

“They’re gone,” Nolofinwe said, and the words echoed hollowly and disappeared into the sea’s roar. “We have to - the Valar must know what happened, they can ask Ulmo - “

“Ulmo,” Feanaro scoffed as he waded out deeper and at last found what he was looking for. He pulled up a stone with grim triumph. “I thought so,” he said. “It’s the tide marker.”

“Our brother is missing and you’re worried about a tide marker?” Nolofinwe demanded.

“I am,” Feanaro agreed without the slightest hint of shame. “Because this is the marker for high tide.” He looked pointedly from where he was standing to where Nolofinwe stood.

There was three yards between them.

Water licked around Nolofinwe’s feet.

Nolofinwe hadn’t moved.

It should be low tide now, but the water was still rising. 

“Feanaro,” he said, throat oddly tight, “get out of the water.”

“In a minute. I want to - “

The shadows were growing thicker in the water around his half-brother. 

“Feanaro, _now!”_

Feanaro took an annoyed stride forward.

Something surged from the water just behind him, teeth snapping shut on empty air.

In the single moment he saw it, it almost seemed to be nothing _but_ teeth.

Feanaro was at his side in a moment then, and backing out of the water entirely. Nolofinwe hurried to follow his example, just this once.

He tried to tell himself that it was only his imagination that tendrils of water reached for them as they left it.

He walked backwards all the same. He wanted a lot more earth between him and the water before he turned his back on the darkening sea.


	5. Nessa

Finduilas had never danced before. It had always been forbidden. It was dangerous, her father had told her when she tried to spin in circles as a child. _Dangerous._

For the life of her, she can’t now remember why. Dancing is glorious. She could do it for days.

Sometimes it feels like she already has.

A hand falls from hers in the circle and the next person leaps forward and takes it up. The circle remains unbroken, and she’s so glad. They can spin all the faster when they have companions to push themselves on.

They all leap together, and she lands a bit wrong. The floors of Nargothrond didn’t used to be so slick, but something red and rather sticky is all over them now.

It flits across her mind that if she can feel that, her shoes must be worn through, and for a moment she looks down and sees her feet - shoes in tatters, blood caked along the soles, and a feeling like there are shards of glass sticking through every inch of her feet and legs.

Then they all leap together again, and the thought disappears.

She lands on something soft this time that feels oddly like a wrist, and she kicks it aside with a laugh. There is no hand at the end of the wrist, just thick scars and for a moment she thinks -

_“Run!” he shouts as he throws her behind him. Something is coming over the bridge, something that shakes it with awful, rhythmic sound, and she turns to run like he said, but the music tugs at her, and - _

The circle is smaller now than it was. The tighter the circle gets, the faster they spin, and the faster the music gets.

Finduilas opens her mouth to sing with it, but her voice comes out as a horrible croak that is not at all suitable.

Better just to stick to the dance.


	6. Oromë

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this AU, Oromë is still the first one to find the elves. He just . . . doesn't feel the need to share this information with anyone else.

There were no hoof prints in the mud by the water, and the birds had not fallen silent from fear, so Tyelkormo had some small hope that they would not die for their trip to the river today.

Still, he was the one to ghost silently to the edge of the water. Better that Tyelpe stay back, hidden by the shadows of the trees, ground that Tyelkormo had already checked for traps.

He had lost too many to the Hunter’s traps to risk anything else.

The twins might still live, he reminded himself. They had been separated in their flight from the Hunter’s dogs. He had not seen them ripped to pieces, like Makalaure, or watched one of the Hunter’s cold metal traps spring up and tear them in two like Maitimo, or -

He banished visions of both blood and hope from his mind. He couldn’t afford to think of anything but his surroundings. Not now. 

He was the only one of their people left to look after little Tyelpe, and he would not fail in his task now.

If there were traps on the riverbank, they weren’t planted here, and he allowed himself one silent huff of relief. He turned and signed, _Stay_, at Tyelpe anyway. He would fill the skins up and take the water back.

It was safer to sign than to speak. Speaking made noise, and noise called the Hunter like the cries of a wounded animal had once called Tyelkormo.

He would never run to that cry now, no matter how many ribs he counted under his and Tyelpe’s fraying tunics. Even if the noise was not a trap, running to it would make him too incautious. Better to wait and set traps of his own. They had survived that way this far.

Easier, now that there was just the two of them left to feed.

He filled the water skins quickly and turned back to Tyelpe. It was still quiet, and the quiet was good, the quiet was -

It wasn’t quiet. It was silent. Utterly silent.

The birds had stopped singing.

He forgot every rule he had and ran.

Tyelpe was gone. All too obvious hoof prints made a trail through the trees.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a child’s cry of pain.

It was the first time he’d heard Tyelpe’s voice in three years. He hadn't so much as whispered since Curufin had been lost.

It was the first time he’d heard _anyone’s_ voice in - in too long.

The last time he'd heard a voice had been a scream too.

A man would have to be mad to run after a trail that clear, a cry that loud, a trap that plain.

He had heard his people’s screams as they were eaten alive by the Hunter’s hounds. 

His mother had been among them.

He didn’t think he’d been sane since.

The trap was straight ahead.

He ran towards it, full tilt.


	7. Nienna

Curufinwe wasn’t entirely surprised that he had to go in search of his father when the time for supper came and went past without a single sighting of him. Nor was he exactly surprised to find him in the forge.

He _was_ surprised to see his father holding red hot metal in his bare hand.

“Atar!”

Feanaro looked up with a slowness that was disturbing in his father, who normally moved with a swiftness that strove to mimic that of his thought. “I’m experimenting,” he explained, nothing but faint interest in his tone. “It doesn’t hurt at all.” He laughed. “I think it tickles a bit.”

His hand turned and Curufinwe had to swallow back bile when he saw the color the skin had turned.

“Put it down, Atar. Please.”

“As you like,” his father said agreeably, and it all but fell to the ground. His father looked down at his hand. “It seems function is still somewhat impaired,” he added, but he didn’t so much as frown at the potential catastrophe this could be. His father’s hands were essential to his craft. How could he be so calm? 

Was his father in shock? What had _happened?_ “We’ll get it fixed,” he assured his father as he eased towards him. “We’ll - we’ll go to Lorien if we have to.”

“We’re not supposed to leave Formenos,” his father reminded him. “And surely it can’t be as bad as all that.”

“Let Grandfather decide that,” Curufinwe said, desperately throwing the matter up to a higher authority.

“That doesn’t hurt either,” his father said with mild surprise. “Indis. Nolofinwe. Miriel. Exile.” He lingered over each word like they were chemicals he was waiting for a reaction from, but his expression never changed. “Not the slightest pang,” he murmured. “Let’s see. Your grandfather once told Indis that he wished I was as easy a child as Nolofinwe, did I ever tell you that? It bothered me for years, but I don’t feel a thing about it now. I think I could cheerfully admit it to Nolo.”

_“Nolo?”_ Curufinwe choked out. “Atar, what’s happened to you? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” his father said with a smile. “Not in the slightest. For the first time in years, I don’t hurt at all.” His gaze went distant. “She told me that, you know,” he added. “I hadn’t even noticed how much pain was there until she came and said how tired she was of all this pain. How much it hurt her to have to bear it. I wasn’t so sure about whole thing,” Atar added in a confiding tone, and suddenly Curufinwe sees just how much of a mess the forge is. A table has been knocked onto its side. Half his father’s tools have been pulled off the walls and - and thrown, is his best guess. It looks like the aftermath of a bar brawl.

But no bar brawl would ever leave his father like this.

“But it’s fine now, obviously,” Atar said, waving his hand carelessly, not even seeming to notice that he had waved it through the fire.

“Atar!” he said, lunging forward and dragging him away.

His father’s skin looks raw, the sight and smell of the burn turning Curufinwe’s stomach, but Atar still seems not to notice.

He is truly frightened now.

“Don’t be upset, young one,” his father said. He reaches up and cups Curufinwe’s cheek with his burned hand and seems not to notice his son’s shudder. “Please don’t be upset. There’s no need to feel pained over it.”

“No need to - “

His choking objection cut itself off as he heard a sound like the fluttering of veils behind him.

“No more pain,” Nienna said, and it sounded more like an order than a comfort.

Her icy hand squeezed his neck.

It was rather tight, but he felt no pain.


	8. Varda and Manwe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween!

He hadn’t understood just how grateful he should be for the shield of the Trees’ warm light light until it was gone.

Even Ungoliant’s darkness, a smothering cloud no light could breach that had lingered for hours afterward, had been better than this.

As terror inducing as it had been, Finrod would take it back in an instant if it meant there was more than the thin cloth of his tent between his eyes and the stars.

He’d seen glimpses out of the corner of his eye. It was impossible not to on the Ice.

He’d heard them too.

Sometimes they whispered. Sometimes they sang.

Sometimes they screamed.

It was better not to listen too much.

But how could they not scream? Out there in a void where the darkness swelled with the movements of _something,_ something that Elenwe had jumped into the ice cold sea to escape, something that had led more than one of their followers to gouge out their own eyes and scratch at their children’s - 

They tied blindfolds around the children’s faces now and carried them across the treacherous Ice, but the rest of them didn’t dare to wear their own. The sky was not the only danger on this shifting bridge of knife sharp ice.

When they stopped for rest, there was the safety of the tents, or at least the illusion of safety.

In the distance, he heard the sound of wings. 

He rolled to his feet and took up the spear beside his nest of blankets.

Death came from the air in more ways than one.

Their tents couldn’t withstand the razor claws that were coming. Exposed and vulnerable, some would look up.

And those that wouldn’t would be all the more vulnerable when those wings swept back down, seeking blood.

They needed stone, not cloth, a fortress buried under a mountain’s worth of rock that claws could not break and the void could not seep through.

But for now there was only cloth and spears and a prayer for their ears to be keen enough to find targets their eyes didn’t dare seek.


	9. Vaire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter posted today!
> 
> Also, quick note: Morgoth is still evil in this one. It's just that Vaire is also . . . dark.

_Would you like to try again?_ she asked, and Maedhros was tired, so tired, but maybe - maybe if he could change things - 

And her fingers picked apart the threads, and he was back in Formenos with the darkness fraying around him and his grandfather’s blood spilling across the floor.

Last time, he had stayed to gather up his brothers and calm the frantic crowd.

This time, he gave chase.

It had been foolish. He had known that.

He had thought he had known every kind of pain.

He had not counted on being devoured.

_I had to weave you back into being,_ she said. _Would you like to try again?_

He struggled to think, much less answer, but she must have read something in his face or his heart because he was standing in Tirion, the last words of his Oath burning his lips.

He had only meant to stand firm, to argue like he had long wished he had. He had only meant to make a point, he had not thought - he had not meant -

There could not actually be blood on his hands. Not here, in the Halls of the Dead.

He saw it anyway.

They had called him kinslayer before, but he had never felt it so keenly as he did now.

But never before had he had a brother’s blood on his hands.

He had only meant - but Alqualonde was not forgiving.

_Would you like to try again?_

He was hanging from Thangorodrim, and he couldn’t help but laugh, a wild bitter sound, because his first thought was to be _grateful._

The moon was not yet in the sky which meant that for the first time he had not been thrown into the middle of things.

This time, he had time to plan.

It still wasn’t enough.

In the early days of his studies under his father, he had made a piece that had not come out quite right. He had tried and tried to correct it into its proper shape, but instead it had only gathered more dents and pits until it was more grotesque than before.

_It’s alright,_ his father had said. _Melt it down. Try again._

_Try again._

Again. And again.

Until every chance was lost and he was standing once again in Formenos, hands painted red by his grandfather’s blood, and every inch of his skin ached from a hundred deaths.

It was a puzzle. A chess board set up in a game already started, but somewhere there was a series of moves that would win the game. 

There had to be.

_It’s enough,_ he told her, too weary even for triumph.

The others were alive, the Oath fulfilled, Morgoth defeated, the only hands stained his own. It was enough.

_It’s a happy enough ending,_ she agreed, _but it needs more tragedy to be truly beautiful._

_Try again._

The threads unravelled. 

Fire burst forth from his father’s corpse. Distantly, he heard his brothers’ cries.

It was only the sure knowledge of where he’d end up that kept him from throwing himself into the flame.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Murder of Nightengales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21161453) by [she_who_recs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_who_recs/pseuds/she_who_recs)


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